Familiar threads run through SCR's 'Carol'

Dwight Richard Odle, who has been involved with South Coast Repertory's "A Christmas Carol" since Day One, remembers that the venerable holiday play, now in its 33rd season, started for the most mundane reason: a hole in the calendar.

"We were closing a show sometime before Thanksgiving," said Odle, a veteran scenic and costume designer with a five-decade résumé. "We looked at the schedule and suddenly realized that the theater was going to be dark for more than a month. It really hadn't hit us before then."

SCR founder-directors Martin Benson and David Emmes turned to their colleague Jerry Patch and asked him if he could produce an adaptation of Charles Dickens' famous story of Yuletide redemption at lightning speed. The two wanted a traditional version that they could own and control.

"He did it in a couple of weeks," Odle recalled. "We then had about two weeks to put the show together. It was a real crash course."

Odle was assigned the tricky task of creating more than 150 costumes for men and women, adults and children that covered several different historical periods. Working fast under severe time and budget constraints, he pulled it off. Odle's costumes were singled out as one of the high points of the original production.

"Even though we had limited time, we wanted to build them to last," Odle said. "But we had to do things that I would call shortcuts. I remember that the gowns for Fred's party scene were essentially the same brocade material in a range of colors."

Emmes gave Odle a suggestion that has stayed with him through the years. "David at one point early in the process called the production 'operatic.' I think what he was wanting was detail and texture and a feeling of richness and depth. He wanted history to come alive."

Since the play's 1980 debut, Odle and his team have spent countless hours repairing, altering and replacing costumes as time took its course and directorial concepts for some scenes changed.

"About seven or eight years ago, we got a nice chunk of money and we replaced all of the party dresses with silk taffeta. The natural fibers light better, last longer and simply look better on stage. Each dress has about 10 yards of fabric."

ATTENTION TO CLASS, CHANGING STYLES

Odle, an Orange County native, was steered toward his calling in high school by a helpful teacher.

"I was an art major at Fullerton High School, but I loved theater as well. A drama teacher took me under his wing. I said, 'I love art and theater equally.' He said, 'Why don't you put them together?' I'd never thought of that."

The teacher gave Odle his first assignment. "It was a Hispanic play called 'The Red Velvet Goat,' a little one-act. I did a fairly simple set. It got a commendation at a student festival held at the Pasadena Playhouse."

Odle went on to Fullerton College and USC before finishing his undergraduate degree at San Francisco State University. There he met some of the talented theater people who would go on to form the original company of South Coast Repertory in 1964.

After finishing his graduate degree in design at Yale University, where he studied both set and costume design, Odle returned to Southern California and made good on his SCR connections. He has also worked extensively at the Laguna Playhouse, Fullerton Civic Light Opera and many other theaters in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

Odle pointed out he's not the only member of the original creative team who's still involved with SCR's "A Christmas Carol."

"There are several others. (Lighting designers) Tom and Donna Ruzika are still with us. Jerry has worked on (the script) almost every year. They're still fine-tuning dialogue. The show is not a museum piece by any means. We keep rethinking things."

One example: The Ghost of Christmas Present.

"He started out as a little English gentleman, shorter and a bit rotund," Odle said. "We dressed him in a tailcoat with a wreath of candles on his head. We changed him – gave him an elegant robe with fur borders and cuffs."

Odle's work is complemented with more than 25 wigs. "They change because styles change over the time periods in the play."

Those time periods have been the subject of debate over the years.

"At first we weren't that specific. Then a few years ago we tried to create a true timeline for Dickens' story. 1854 is Scrooge's present. That was just the beginning of the hoop skirt period for women. The ghost of Christmas past takes him back to probably 1795. Then we move forward to Scrooge's young-adult years, about 1810 or 1815. It's the Empire period in France, Regency in England. That's when we have Fezziwig's party. Styles were high-waisted with a slim silhouette.

"Then we did a lot of research on social strata, the pecking order, and how people of various classes would dress."

After more than three decades, have Odle and his colleagues perfected the story?